Snehal Upadhyay-
High Court of Delhi has dismissed a plea of a candidate, who was overweight by 2kgs making him medically unfit for joining the Indian Air Force.
A division bench comprising Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Justice Amit Bansal said that “Burdening the Indian Air Force with an overweight Airman who would be unfit for performing the duties.”
The petition was filed to conduct the re-examination of the medical fitness of the candidate, as in earlier examination he was deemed unfit because of being 2kgs overweight.
The petitioner was to be appointed as an Airman based on his medical fitness certificate which was issued by a private hospital which on May 5 reported him to be 59kgs, the petitioner weighed 64.7 kgs on March 8.
The Court highlighted that “The aforesaid facts indicate that it took the petitioner two months to bring his weight down from 64.7 Kgs to 59 Kgs. The same nullifies the argument of the counsel for the petitioner, of the excess weight of 2 Kgs only being easily manageable.”
Also Read: Delhi HC stays CIC’s order directing IAF to provide details of PM’s foreign trips
The Court further stated that the candidate might be well aware of the medical requirements even before participating in the recruitment procedures, though he lost weight, still was not able to maintain his weight to the required limits indicating that the candidate has weight gain problems which are making him not fit to be an Airman.
The petitioners’ counsel said that being overweight by 2kgs is a dilute matter and hence the candidate should be re-examined.
The Court responded that there are some rules, which must be abided by all whether the rules be concerning height, weight or sex it must be followed and even slight variation cannot be tolerated.
“The Court cannot dilute the said Rule by permitting the violation of the Rule, in the name of being minuscule,” the Court said and rejected the plea.
